Hundreds line up in Union for Kid Cudi tickets

Carolann Howard stood in line for almost two hours yesterday to get tickets for a Kid Cudi… Carolann Howard stood in line for almost two hours yesterday to get tickets for a Kid Cudi concert next month.

Howard, a sophomore, said she wasn’t sure why she waited so long for the tickets.

She went to the N.E.R.D. concert Pitt Program Council hosted last year.

“It was boss,” she said. “We had just lost the Sweet Sixteen and N.E.R.D. said, ‘OK, we’re gonna have some fun.’”

The crowd was energetic, Howard said, so it got the students’ minds off the game.

The crowd in the William Pitt Union yesterday was quite different.

Students formed a line that wrapped from the ticket sales desk back toward the Kimbo Art Gallery, turned the corner until it hit the PPC office and then turned again, stopping about 10 feet away from the Kurtzman Ballroom.

The hundreds of students who lined up throughout the day waited for $5 tickets to the PPC-sponsored Kid Cudi concert, which occur in the Fitzgerald Field House at 8 p.m. March 27.

Cudi, a hip-hop artist, is most well-known for his song “Day ‘N’ Night.”

The students were fairly quiet. Many did their homework or read books while waiting.

Dennis Wilson, a sophomore, passed the time by listening to his iPod and doing “absolutely nothing” else.

He got into line around 9 a.m., and by 10:45, he was about a dozen people away from the ticket window.

Wilson said he skipped his game theory class to buy five tickets.

“I thought I’d be able to walk up [to the window],” he said. “I was kind of pissed, but it’s all right. It’s a sacrifice.”

Carolyn Reich, a receptionist for PPC, said the group was surprised by the turnout.

Ticket sales tend to depend upon which artist is performing, but they tend to peak around 10 a.m., when a couple dozen people usually show up at the ticket office, Reich said.

She said she thought the Kid Cudi tickets sold quickly because “he has one really big hit, and he’s an up-and-coming artist.”

The council sold more than 1,000 of the 1,400 tickets it could, Reich said. The remaining tickets are for assigned seats, rather than the general admission tickets that would allow people to get closer to the stage.

It will continue to sell tickets at its ticket booth, next to the information desk in the Union, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today.